Ship Designer - Interior Layout Tool

[leadphalanx]

After chatting about this idea in Discord, it was suggested I make a write-up and put it up here.

What it all boils down to is that creating an interior of a ship is tedious and exhausting.  I'm more than capable of modelling out all the rooms, setting up jigs for doorways/windows,creating doors, creating voids, getting it all configured, etc., etc., etc.  but thought of spending that much time and effort just to get one interior designed is a bit discouraging.  Quite a few people feel the same way.  However, I am definitely not advocating removing these features, or scrapping the new editor.  Instead, I think a bit of automation could fix this up.  Add a non-destructive workflow and you've got a recipe for ship designing to be a hell of a lot more fun.

I've put together a bit of a 'mock-up' of how this could work.  This 'floorplan' tool would essentially allow players to easily create a layout of their interior, and keeping it in a non-destructive workflow so things can be moved, added, or deleted at any point.  It would control all the voids, doors, connections between rooms, etc. so all you have to worry about it what shape the rooms need to be.

This tool would be completely optional of course.  While working with this tool, the rooms you create would be 'controlled' by the floorplan tool.  As such, you cannot directly mess with the geometry of the rooms with the normal tools (but adding in extra pieces like pipes, consoles, chairs, etc. would work).  After you are happy with a layout however, it could be converted into a standard format for more in-depth customization (if so desired).

Similarly to the old designer, you would be only drawing the 'floorplan' of the design.  Rather than "painting" in grids though, you will be drawing a free-form shape on a grid (much like you would do before extruding a flat object to create something 3d).
-Each room will have a matching interior void which will change as the room is changed.
-Rooms will have a minimum distance to an adjacent room, to prevent clipping of any sort and leave room for doorways.
-Room height will be set by a 'deck height' value, which is a global design setting that can be modified.
-As in the old designer, you can work on multiple 'decks'.
-Rooms can be set to be several decks tall.
-Maybe can set rooms to be set at a mid-deck height? As long as there is some room collision 'invalidation' seems like it could be fine.




For some designs, having an easy way of drawing out hallways between rooms would be useful.  For halls, instead of drawing out the shape of the room manually, you would select a point on the walls of two rooms, creating a hall between them automatically. 
-These will remain connected even after moving a room
-All the necessary voids will be set up
-Options for adding/adjusting curvature of the hall
-These can be ramps/stairs when connecting to rooms in different decks



Doors and windows would also work similarly to the old designer (or at least attempt to). 
-Placing a door will automatically create a door connecting the adjacent room.  This is a dynamic 'door' object that can be moved/modified at will while you design.
-Windows and external doors will attempt to connect to the external hull model once finalized


Doors could have a 'shape' you assign them (for example a simple trapezoid like the below pic), with a door-frame automatically created along with doors (if you want doors that is). 
-Control panel automatically added (optional)
-Dynamic door 'width' slider for bay/cargo doors and such.




The rooms themselves of course will need some spice so they don't end up just being flat-walled boxes. Here's a mock-up of what you could see when selecting a room or hallway:




Wall Profile Editor window:





Which in a hallway would look like this:
-For halls, this applies to just the sides of the hall, where a standard room applies the shape to every side of the room.



Having some 'struts' to throw in can also spice things up.  





[url=https://imgur.com/srWLNR8][/url]

[pizzasgood]

I have wanted precisely this for a while now.

[Deantwo]

Interior designing like this was always on my wishlist.
Full 3D editing is great for exterior, but interior is best with clearly defined rules.

Totally free-form interior leads to a lot of pathing issues for AI, too much designing complexity, and a ton of exploits when considering multiplayer PvP.
With the current designer you can make invisible doors, intentionally bad pathing for AI, and many other things. And then there are all the accidental issues you can have with interior designing, such as accidentally forgetting voids or AI pathing and broken doors or ramps.

[Vectorus]

I've also advocated a system like this for a long time, and it's great to see someone beginning to grind out possible details.

Please do note, though, that, unlike Dean, OP and I are against taking any functionality away from the full modelling system; I would only support adding on some optional but not obligatory shortcuts to the workflow.

[Neils Iyssada]

Same than Vectorus. There should be a simple designer and a complete designer.

The simple designer has the layout system for interior and some other way to make it easier.

We could even have a local part library, and an online library exchange.

[Deantwo]

Please do note, though, that, unlike Dean, OP and I are against taking any functionality away from the full modelling system; I would only support adding on some optional but not obligatory shortcuts to the workflow.

Same than Vectorus. There should be a simple  designer and a complete designer.

The simple designer has the layout system for interior and some other way to make it easier.

We could even have a local part library, and an online library exchange.

I have already listed a number of issues and exploits in my previous post, so I'll skip that part.

But if Hazeron is supposed to be a PvP game, then fully customizable interiors is a huge issue. There is currently no rules on how broken you can make AI pathing, unbreachable doors, gravity traps, or plain unnavigable mazes.

I guess this will remain an issue until the game has a set vision for either "hardcore PvP with designer" or "Second Life in space", rather than trying to be both at the same time.

[Moghom]

I think I'll be dead before Steam Day, dudes

[danthemanisme95]

I want to elaborate on this idea some.

If possible, hull construction could be achieved through simple drag and drop of primitives think a hybrid between Spore vehicle designer and TinkerCad.

[AnrDaemon]

Short version: return an old designer. It's intuitive and accessible.

[Ivan]

If you guys you haven't already, take a look at Interstellar Rift's designer. It is a bit similar to the old designer, but better and more modern. Drawing and removing tiles is more flexible. It also has multiple levels, so could bring back the formalised floors, which made the floorplan visible in top down view. (as could the method proposed above)


Something like that would be neat, especially combined with a fully free exterior designer, but even just the Insterstellar Rift designer alone, with some adaptations for hazeron, would be good also.

But the thing suggested here would be good also, perhaps even better, not sure.

And to the people saying don't take away freedom: if someone makes very small hallways that most characters cannot pass through, or makes a room with just a bed and helm station and no doors or transporters, how will we capture their ships (with shields up) if that awesome feature is to remain (or return since C4 cannot blow up doors atm)? So I think we do need formalised minimum height and (indirect) hull door/transporter access to rooms. Unless you don't want boarding to be a part of the game anymore.

I think this is so important, that even designing one single more ship (or at least its interior) in the current designer is an absolute waste of time. The game really needs designs with restrictions and formalised interiors and will get them sooner or later, so might aswell be sooner, instead of wasting time on an unrestricted designer.